A Trip down Memory Lane

So, this is going to get really personal. If you don't want to get into my history or just don't care about it, skip to the bottom for a Poro picture (It's why you all come here anyway). As I sit here typing, outside is absolutely pouring. It's hasn't rained like this in a while, and I find myself hating the weather despite the fact that many people love rain. Obviously people who farm (which is a lot of people where I live) enjoy the rain as it helps their livelihoods. But I personally know a number of people who see it raining outside, and rush out to stand in it. I usually stand under a roof somewhere and look at them in confusion.

Some backstory to my dislike is probably in order. A number of years ago, I met a girl (Cue groaning, tiny violins, and other forms of cliches). This girl had me absolutely smitten, to the point that the young me believed I was in love for the first time in my life. I spent a huge amount of time with her and did everything I could to impress her. I played piano for her so she had an accompanist, I sang songs for her despite my very unimpressive singing voice, I tried to get all the answers right in theory class to show off to her (This was all at band camp, so music stuff is basically all we did every day).
Anyway, this went on for a while and I began to slowly work up all the courage a geeky teenage boy could to tell the pretty girl how he felt. Literally the day a planned to tell her how I felt, the worst possible thing, in my mind, happened. A boy she knew from before showed up. He was athletic, he was suave, and he had history with her. He was also a colossal ass-hat. You might be thinking that I only thought this because he swooped in and stole the girl I was pining over, but this was an opinion shared by everyone I talked to about him. Somehow, he took my place in her affection within minutes of his arrival.
The next week was spent watching the girl I was in love with spend all her time with someone I despised. The worst part was that this guy saw that I liked her, and paraded her around in front of me, mocking me. After the week of came to a close, the girl of my affection (and Mr. Ass-Hat, thankfully) went home. There was only one week left for me at this point, but I probably didn't care at all. It rained for that entire last week. Not "Drizzling on and off for a few days". Every. Single. Day. For a week. So the skies matched my mood, and engrained the association with rain and depression into my mind.

Now, I look outside and see the rain. I remember my friends who love the rain and all those scenes in movies where the two lovers finally kiss while it's deluging out. They all seem so happy in the rain. I think it's time I was happy in the rain again.

Plantie has angered the Skygods. The mock him with water that he cannot reach.

Today's Poro is pretending to be a mermaid, and even has a few little fish-Poro friends. Because reasons.

Toodles!

A Matter of Stoneware

As I come to the second day of blogging, I've come to the realization that people who do this full-time are massively impressive. To come up with a new topic for every post already seems like a difficult task, let alone to do it every day. It doesn't help that watching a particular episode of How I Met Your Mother has left me wanting to make every sentence rhyme.

I drink a lot of tea. Like, A LOT a lot. Some people have to work to make sure they drink enough water in a day. I easily exceed the recommended amount, and only have to make two pots of tea to do it. Having a 5 cup capacity teapot and drinking green tea (which you brew more than once) helps immensely. I'm sure there will be a post at sometime or another about that teapot, but I need to keep my options open so I can post every day.

Now, for the matter of stoneware. I was recently in Winnipeg visiting family. While I was there, I was able to attend a pop-up shop set up by my sibling, Ash. In case you're interested in some really cool knitting, getting yarn, or patterns to make yourself, check out Sunflower Knit.
They were selling yarns and sewing creations at a local artist shop downtown. At this particular artist shop, Tara Davis Studio Boutique, there was tons of pottery. I am a sucker for mugs, which helps feed my tea addiction. While gushing over this mug or that one, I noticed a corner of the store that had taller mugs. Upon closer inspection, I discovered the amazing part of the store that housed their collection of stoneware. I love how stoneware feels with tea. The weight of the mug, the texture of cup's lip, the way heat transfers from it to your hand. Uuuung.

I'm I geek. Shut up...

Anyway, this particular mug was beautiful. I love the difference in colouring on the inside compared to the outside. A mug with a well-designed handle is a wonderful thing that I don't think everyone truly appreciates. A badly made cup can ruin a lovely drink all on it's own.

Here is the mug in question, along with Plantie. Plantie loves mugs too.

Today's Poro is pretending to be a barbarian. Because reasons.

Toodles!

A Long Hiatus

It's been quite a while since my last post, and there have been a lot of changes in my life in that time. I'm not even sure I live in the same place as I was when I last posted. Regardless, I've made a lot of lifestyle changes in the last couple of months. Getting back to posting my thoughts could be another positive change.

So one of the big changes I made was actually going to the gym. Not "Oh, I should work-out more." *Proceed to binge a Netflix show with a bag of chips*. To be fair, I still love watching Netflix and have been given the clear to eat a ton of food. What I mean is that I actually go to the gym, and work out all of my muscles. This causes me to be sore. Like, all the bloody time. The difference now is that my muscles are sore instead of randomly in pain. I must say, I'll take sore over pain any day.

Another big change since my last post is the fact that I am, once again, single. This is certainly for the better, based on how that relationship turned out. The crappy thing about being single is missing human contact. Not like shaking hands, or giving a friend a smack for being dumb. I sincerely miss intimate contact, having someone to hug or hold hands with. Someone to just sit directly next to and sit against them happily. Yes, I am a huge romantic and extremely cheesy. That's just how I do relationships. While I miss this kind of contact, I'm coming to terms with the fact that right now I just don't have that. I've got some great friends around to keep me sane, even if some like to be jerks about it and mess with me. When you have people around that know you well enough to screw with you, without being genuinely mean, you're in a good place.

I don't really know how this blog will evolve at this point. The post might be pretty random unless people ask for a specific direction. If you stick around, I appreciate the interest.

This is Plantie. He lives in my apartment at the moment, and I am doing what I can to keep him alive as long as possible. You shall see more of Plantie in the future.

And this is a Poro, from League of Legends, simply because he is adorable. He is pretending to be a pirate. Because reasons.

Toodles!

Wintereenmas

Alright, Dark Souls out of the way.

This past week has been a holiday called Wintereenmas, created by Tim Buckley in his web-comic Ctr-Alt-Del. If you are reading my blog for any reason, you should also be reading this web-comic. It is hilarious. The short version is that Wintereenmas is a holiday dedicated to gamers, and is a week dedicated to playing video games. Normally, people participating in the holiday choose a difficult goal and aim to achieve it by the end of the week (the web-comic characters attempt to beat Hard mode in Demon's Souls one year). This year, because of a shifted exam schedule, I was unable to fully participate in the holiday. A fair amount of D&D did get played during this week, as well as planning for my own campaign. I will be uploading videos of all future gaming sessions of my campaign, so anyone actually reading my blog should find those entertaining, at the least.

Dark Souls Continuation

My last entry was a broad description of how difficult Dark Souls is. That said, one of my roommates beat the first play through yesterday. He had some difficult fights, but he pulled through and killed the last boss. Because I'm playing the game as well, I made sure to not be around for the fight, as I didn't want to ruin the ending.

Seeing as he only bought the game last week, beating it this quickly would appear to be a great accomplishment. The fact that he has basically lived on the couch and played for hours on end diminishes this feat. Regardless, he has moved on to playing the game in the second play through. This is supposedly more difficult, but it only proves to have one challenge. Because he keeps all his equipment and stats, he still kills most enemies in one hit. The only increase in difficulty is that most enemies now have the ability to eat through 90% of his health in one or two hits.

This post has been in draft form for a while, and the initial train of thought is gone.

All in all, Dark Souls is a great game to challenge advanced gamers, a game to keep away from the easily frustrated and beginners, and an improvement on its predecessor, Demon's Souls.

Matters Other than Tea

I have only really been talking about tea up to this point, so I'm going to post about something equally awesome; Video games.


The current game being played in my house is Dark Souls (DaS)


Dark Souls Official Website


For those who didn't click the link, the site's URL is "prepare to die" dot com. That couldn't be truer for this game. The game begins, and you literally have nothing. Okay, you have a broken sword hilt as a weapon, but that's it. Not to give any details away from the game, but you die quickly. And often. Like, all the time.


Anyway, defeating enemies in this game rewards you with "souls". These souls are the monetary system for the game. Unfortunately, giving you money for every enemy would apparently be to easy for DaS. Souls function as what you use to buy items from the handful of shopkeepers hidden throughout the game, your expenses for repairing and upgrading your equipment, and, most importantly, the cost to increase your stats and level. Every single point you put into a stat costs a certain amount of souls, and this costs quickly becomes very large for just a single point. The other difficult part of the game is that when you die (which can happen at pretty much anytime), you lose all the souls you had, plus all "humanities" you've acquired, which are another form of rare but important item you find. Once dead, you have one chance to find your body and recover the souls and humanities you lost. If you die before reaching your body, those souls are lost. You had 20,000 souls because you were working towards getting a new level, but died against the enemy there? And he killed you again? Sorry, sucks to be you, start at zero souls.


The game also takes place in two states of being. You are either Undead (Which is the game's version of being alive) or Hollow (Dead, in spirit form). You probably spend a large amount of time being Hollow, but if you do spend a humanity to become "alive" again, you get another perk for not being Hollow. You can summon other players to help you in your game, both NPC and PC, and they can make your life monumentally easier. Also, your resistance to damage goes up. Being alive is great! Right? That would make the game too easy. So DaS throws another thing at you. As long as you're alive and in an area that you haven't beat the boss in, other PLAYERS can invade your game as evil spirits. Like someone who has varied strategies, good equipment, and a boiling anger that develops from playing the game. Their sole purpose for invading your game? Killing you and stealing your souls. These evil phantoms are immune to all game enemies and environment hazards, and can wait to attack you until you are already fighting a giant rat/black knight/room full of archers/etc. If you kill the invading phantom, they get sent back into their own game. No drawbacks. The only downside to invading people's games is that a certain item lets you report invaders to an in-game group of hunters to eventually attack the invader.


Between the ridiculous cost for levels, the massive drawbacks of dying, the constant threat of an area turning into a PvP manhunt, and the massive power that your enemies wield, Dark Souls is not a game for casual players, starting players, or anyone who doesn't ever want to throw their controller at their TV. But Dark Souls goes back to an older time in video games. The game doesn't hand you shiny new items and levels for simply playing. You earn everything in this game, and when you get enough souls for a level, or repel an invading phantom, or beat that boss who can kill you with one glancing hit, you feel awesome. Not many games now can give that feeling of accomplishment. All this said, Dark Souls is actually easier than it's predecessor, Demon's Souls. I won't get into that game, mouthful of a title that it is.

Dealing with Maté

One of the other presents I received for the holidays this year was a bombilla set and a large amount of Yerba Maté. For those who are unaware, Yerba Maté is an African drink, made from an herb found locally there. It is very powdery and is available for fairly cheap in a lot of places. It also comes in a wide variety of flavours.

The traditional way to make Yerba Maté is quite a complicated process, but the short version is to add the tea to a gourd (called a Maté), place a special straining spoon (called a bombilla) in the gourd, add a little bit of cold water to clump the tea, then under-boiling water to make the tea. Sounds simple enough, right?

My first attempt at making this tea was not very successful. I tried to make the cold version of the tea, but ended up adding the water too quickly. This ended with more than a little bit of the tea to make its way up the straw. Because I didn't want to waste the tea, I ended up simply placing the straw inside of a tea bag and then into the cup. This worked to keep the leaves out of the straw, but is definitely not the right way to do it. More research on the process will probably help.

The little research I have done on Yerba Maté has revealed a little of the culture behind the drink. Drinking Yerba Maté is apparently a common social component of a gathering. The person who is making the tea makes the first cup, and drinks it quickly. Yerba Maté is not a sipping drink. After finishing their first cup, they make the tea again, using the same leaves, cup, and straw. They hand this to the next person, who quickly drinks it, and so on until everyone has had some. Seems to me like the person making the tea becomes very busy for the duration of whatever event is happening.

Mishaps aside, once I wasn't spitting out pieces of tea, it was a very nice drink. The bag I received is a mint blend, and tasted very refreshing as a cold drink. The hot version will be tried at a later date. It had a distinct mint taste, but also has the caffeine taste that coffee has, albeit a lot less intense. Overall, a nice tea, with a process that will take some mastering.